Health

Karla Chicuate was intellectually acquainted with the morally evil practice of grooming, abducting and selling human beings for labor or sexual exploitation when she traveled in January to west Africa.

After all, she had been working as an educator with the city of Tempe’s Sexual Relationship and Violence Department for about a year and a half when her 10-day excursion began, and she intentionally chose the assignment to work with women and children who had endured human trafficking.

Nearly 1 in 4 Arizona teens have used a highly potent form of marijuana known as marijuana concentrate, according to a new study by Arizona State University researchers.

Among nearly 50,000 eighth, 10th and 12th graders from the 2018 Arizona Youth Survey, a biennial survey of Arizona secondary school students, one-third (33%) had tried some form of marijuana, and nearly a quarter (24%) had tried marijuana concentrate.

Firearms are the second leading cause of death behind vehicle crashes for young people in the U.S., and gun deaths among people age 19 and younger have skyrocketed 44% since 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But research into factors around firearm deaths and injuries has lagged, including how they could be prevented and who is most at risk.

Momentum is beginning to shift toward addressing the effects of mass incarceration, and Arizona State University has several initiatives to address the growing concern over the fate of people in prison, how it affects their families and what happens when they rejoin society.

A new Arizona State University study has found that boys whose parents were less involved and communicative with them during childhood were significantly more likely to carry a gun during their teen years.

The long-term study, posted in the journal Pediatrics today, followed 503 boys over 13 years and found that boys whose parents were less engaged were more likely to associate with delinquent peers and that, in turn, increased their risk of carrying a gun.

Guns — few issues evoke as much passion and raw emotion from almost all corners of society. No matter what your opinion of them is, they are a defining part of what it means to be an American. Whether you view guns as a public-safety issue, a constitutionally protected right or both, their place in our society provokes strong reaction and heated debate.

A study just published by the American Journal of Psychiatry finds that teenage boys who smoked pot at least once a week were at increased risk of experiencing subclinical paranoia and hallucinations, even after they stopped using marijuana.